Birds of a Feather

Flock together – Or do they?

Certainly here at Corindi Beach, all manner of birds flock together.

I don’t profess to be a bird watcher, heck I wouldn’t even know where to start apart, but having spent the last two weeks observing the antics of the prolific bird life I’ve seen here, I’ve been able to compile the following list:

Bush Stone Curlews, Laughing Kookaburras, Australian Magpies, Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos, Red-tailed Black Cockatoos, Rainbow Lorikeets, Galahs, Eastern Whipbird, Silver Gulls, Whistling Kites, Spotted Bowerbirds, Crested Pigeons, Blue Faced Honeyeaters, Spotted Doves, Grey Strike-thrushs, Noisy Miners, Magpie Larks (PeeWees) and Pacific Black Ducks.

These are only the birds I’ve been able to identify, and I’m pretty proud of my efforts, yet there are many, many more varieties flying round, chirping, singing, squawking, trilling, twittering, warbling and whistling.

Ah, natures tweets – the best kind of tweeting that I can think of.

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Most of the birds are very placid, calmly sitting and suspiciously eyeing you off as you walk past or quickly taking to flight just in case you happen to get a little too close.  Others are quite bold and inquisitive, walking over to take a closer look at what you’re doing.

Frustratingly though, all of them have been extremely camera-shy and I’ve not been able to take one decent photo. (Yet)

We have been very respectful of our feathered neighbours, but imagine our surprise when we stumbled upon a pair of nesting Bush Stone Curlews as we walked along the beach between the Arrawarra Headland and Mulaway (just south of Corindi Beach).

We quickly became the target of both mum and dad’s wrath.

Yelling and screaming to make us to go away, dive bombing and demanding we exit the area immediately, we must have made a funny sight, waving our arms overhead and trying to run along the soft wet sand, seemingly making no progress towards departing in the eyes of the curlews.

We knew we had to get out of there, and fast.

Suddenly Dean and I found ourselves trapped in our very own Interstellar moment and we became engulfed in a mini black hole where time stood still.  In super-slow motion our foot falls were sucked further and further below the surface of the sand.  With each crashing wave, the water level rose higher and higher making our departure an imminent impossibility.

Meantime, the curlews assault was played out in double time, affording the proud, protective parents amply opportunities to give their chicks a ‘real world demonstration’ of “How to Get Rid of Intruders“.

I’m absolutely confident the curlews thought we posed a clear and present danger to the safety of their chicks and 100% percent positive they didn’t understand me yelling “Ok, we’re leaving! We won’t hurt your babies!”  (No matter how many times I yelled it.)

I am pleased to say we were eventually ejected from the black hole and moved away allowing the curlews to go back to tending their young.

No more walks along that area of the beach.

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Quick Update, Wednesday December 17, 2014

I was thrilled to get this shot of a Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo this morning.